


In English: Truth.

by Pitseleh



Category: School Ties (1992)
Genre: 1950s, Boarding School, Gen, Judaism, Pennsylvania
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 09:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/pseuds/Pitseleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Classes are mostly over, and the students mill around lazily in clumps, blocking the hallways with discussions the future. Everyone here is obsessed with the future. David tries to let this make him forget about the past. Since, well, since everything last year, there hasn't been much milling for David. He studies, he practices, people don't directly oppose him on the field, and he's mostly left alone, save for the occasional moment of easy malice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In English: Truth.

**Author's Note:**

> The movie is based off Dick Wolf's personal experiences, so I took the liberty of basing this fic off a few of my personal experiences, minus, you know, the Harvard and the 1950s. I also took the liberty of not killing myself trying to figure out who all the minor characters in this damn movie were; I am assuming Dillon's roommate was the one who worked in the kitchens with David, and correspondingly Reece comes from money. The actors are nearly identical, and I can't find a script on the internet, so just work with me here, people, just work with me.

He goes to Harvard.

Or, well, he gets in, anyway. On a scholarship, to boot. When he tells his folks over the phone, he hears them hooting in triumph. And when he gets back to his dorm, he quietly tells Reece, and then lies down to sleep before he can answer. In the darkness David hears Reece begin to talk, and then stop himself, and then sleep takes David before he can wonder.

When morning comes, it brings with it the first blush of true summer. David wakes sweating, and wishes he could take off his shirt and jump into the nearest river, but down that road surely waits demerits, and that just seems like a waste of energy. He has what he wants, now. Best not court disaster.

Classes are mostly over, and the students mill around lazily in clumps, blocking the hallways with discussions the future. Everyone here is obsessed with the future. David tries to let this make him forget about the past. Since, well, since everything last year, there hasn't been much milling for David. He studies, he practices, people don't directly oppose him on the field, and he's mostly left alone, save for the occasional moment of easy malice. David has begun to wonder if the people here really hate Jews, of if they just love easy targets.

But ever since he found the bastard that put up that sign, he's been mostly left alone.

Reece is kind to him, but he doesn't go out of his way. Rip, too. And Connors is alright, but David has long suspected he tells jokes behind his back. 

David is pretty sure everyone tells jokes behind his back. It's hard not to. It's so easy. And these boys are used to easy.

"So, you got a scholarship, huh?" Reece says, and David mentally prepares himself for some crack about money. But it doesn't come-- Reece is pretty good about that, mostly. David'd credit him with an _entirely_ , but he doesn't really trust anyone around here to be entirely good, anymore. 

"Yeah," David says. They're getting ready for bed after a long day of ceremonies and empty gestures. "Football."

"I-I got into Harvard." Reece is always a little tentative when talking to David. David can't quite remember when that started; maybe it's the way it always was.

"Oh, good." David isn't really sure where this is going. "Maybe we'll be roommates again."

"Re-really?" Reece's face lights up into a bright smile just as David turns to see it. Reece says, "I'd like that. Hey- do you wanna see my place over the summer?"

David wasn't expecting that. He agrees before he's thought at all, but the bright smile on Reece's face makes David hesitant to backpedal. Instead, he says, "I can't, uh, stay all summer, but..."

"Oh, no," Reece says, still smiling. "I just thought, since, you know, since we're both from Pennsylvania..."

They're not from the same Pennsylvania, David is pretty sure about that. But he doesn't say it, just nods and listens.

"You could drive up with me, stay for a little while, and then we could drive you to, uh, to-"

"-To Scranton."

"Yeah, Scranton. At the end of summer, we could, uh, we could pick you up and take you to Harvard with me, if you want."

"I can get there myself." He already has, anyway.

"Oh, right. Sorry."

David shrugs. 

"Well, uh, I'll talk it out with my mom on the phone, and you can tell your folks."

So Reece does, and David does, and before he knows it, he's looking out over the vast green fields of a part of Pennsylvania he's never been. Reece's house is nice, sprawling and respectable, and David suspects it'd have its own name, if he asked. He doesn't ask. 

The house is down a winding road off to the side of another winding road, all of them haphazardly cut out of the ample farmland on all sides. The Reece family, of course, does not farm any longer, having switched to some other highly profitable business some time after the Civil War. Reece-- "Oh, call my Chris, David."-- gives David all of this history with a relaxed smile, and David looks out over the fields and wonders who used to populate them.

When they get in, the house is cool and empty, and a man silently takes away their baggage, stowing it in their rooms. Reece-- _Chris_ \-- smiles and shows him around. The house has more rooms than any one house should. 

When they get to the kitchens, Chris covertly asks David about what he'll eat, despite the fact that in the vast echo chamber of his childhood home, they are almost entirely alone.

"Well, you know." Chris shrugs. "You can never tell when a servant is listening."

In fact, David didn't know that.

"But you eat beef and all that kinda stuff, right?"

"Uh- yeah." David half wants to explain to Chris precisely what he's talking about, half wants to sock him in the jaw and run home all the way to Scranton. He does neither. "I can eat anything, so long's it's not moving."

Chris does that smile again. "Great. I'll tell them to cook a proper meal for dinner when my mom gets home."

From all that Chris has said on the subject, David doesn't think Chris has a father. He suspects he died valorously in some war, but he doesn't ask; after all the families with just one parent in Scranton, David'd prefer to pretend like they have at least one threat of commonality between them.

Dinner is a quiet affair. Chris' mother is kind, but has a stillness about her that bleeds into the atmosphere. She smiles and asks after David, and they say grace (David even mostly knows how to say grace now, and look like he means it) and they eat mostly in silence. Mrs Reece asks about school, and what everyone will be studying, and in time David and Chris are sent through the quiet halls into their quiet beds, where David waits for a quiet sleep to take him.

His room is a tomb. The window looks out over the fields stretching before him, and when he looks down David feels the weight of a thousand ghosts looking right back. Above is the moon, the only light in the sky, and if David closes the blinds, his room becomes pitch black and quickly muggy. The guest bedrooms, he suspects, are not used often, and rarely aired out.

David thinks he was asleep for about an hour when hands reach out to touch him in the darkness. David reacts with a start, swatting them away and pushing back from ghosts whose name he does not know.

"David- _David_ , it's Chris. _Shhhh_!"

David stills. " _Jesus_ , Chris, you can't do that to a guy-" He puts his head in his hands, regains himself, before reaching for the flashlight on his bedside table. Their faces are cast in yellow light in the middle of the pitch black darkness. "What d'you want?"

Chris looks chastised, but only for a minute. "I'm meeting some guys in the woods-- wanna come?" He pauses. "There'll be girls."

Now that David is awake, he doubts he'll be able to find sleep again in any hurry. Not in this room.

They dress briskly, and walk out over the fields toward the clump of trees at the edge of the Reece property. Chris breaks the silence as soon as they're out of the shadow of his house. "I was afraid you wouldn't come with... y'know, it being Friday and all."

There are a lot of ways David could respond to that, and all the answers flicker behind his eyes at once. He could say how he's already played with a flashlight and handled money, or how only his granddad used to care about that growing up, or how it's Friday _night_ , not Fri _day_ , but he doesn't owe Chris anything. Chris owes _him_. 

"How'd you find out about that, huh?"

"What, is it some kinda secret?" 

David is quietly glad he said _secret_ and not _Jew secret_. Connors is really fond of that crap, and it'd be a shame to pound Chris' face in where no one else could see it. Wouldn't even serve a purpose, then. Well, besides making David feel better.

So David just shrugs and shakes his head in the moonlight. "Nah," he says. "Most people just don't know about it." Most people. _Your_ people.

"Oh," Chris says, and a strange sort of pride seeps into his voice. "I've been reading up."

"On Jews?" David tries to keep his voice carefully devoid of emotion, but he thinks he mostly ends up sounding bored.

"Well, you know." There's a lengthy pause. "I want to be better than I am."

In the moonlight, David can just see Chris looking down at his shoes. To match, David looks down at the dirt underneath them, and when he looks up, all he can see is the endless reach of the Reece property.

"Yeah," he says. "I hear Harvard's good for that."

Chris' voice cheers a little. "You think?"

"I hope so."


End file.
